Go Home, Cindy
The story of Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a young soldier killed last year in Iraq, is big news in the lefty blogosphere (and a target of ire on the Right) today because she’s staging a protest on the blazing asphalt outside President Bush’s Crawford, Texas compound, demanding an audience with the Great Leader. What does she want exactly? She wants to look the Prez in the eye and ask why her son died. Bush, who met with Sheehan last year during the campaign, has not only refused so far to face her, but is stupidly giving her the straight-arm by siccing his thugs on her and threatening her with arrest and harassement.
This is, I suppose, an interesting story on a slow news day. Mothers of dead sons are always good television, especially when they’re being manhandled by the Arrogant and Powerful. And for some of us, anything that makes Bush look as bad to the rest of the country as we all know he is already is worth celebrating.
Sorry to say, I’m not with the program. Good people die every day for no reason. That you even have someone to ask is almost a blessing. But at the end of the day, it’s just a stupid question.
Mrs. Sheehan, I’ll tell you why your son died.
He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He signed up for a dangerous job and his number came up.
Whatever reasons he had for joining the Army – to serve his country, to get his college paid for, to fire expensive weapons at government expense, to impress people with the uniform – he had the misfortune to serve at a moment in history when this country’s leadership (and citizenry) was spoiling for a fight, and found their excuse.
He died because George W. Bush believes that wars define a President and make a man, and he was happy to smear, fire, ignore and ridicule anyone who tried to alter him from this course.
He died because a bunch of Right Wing think-tank bureaucrats saw a chance to test their pet theory and turned out to have no freaking clue what they were doing.
He died because no one in power suspected that a proud and ancient people would quickly come to resent a “liberation” that looked suspiciously like a neo-colonialist smash-and-grab job.
He died because he and his comrades were asked to do a nearly impossible task, then were abandoned and left with hardly enough material support once the “Mission Accomplished” banner was unfurled.
He died because SUVs get 10 miles to the gallon, so America can’t ignore the world’s second-largest producer of oil the way we can ignore it when tinhorn despots lord it over other barren, remote patches of sand at the edges of the earth.
Mrs. Sheehan, it’s sad your son died. It would be sad if he came home crippled and traumatized, like tens of thousands of other American soldiers. It would be sad even if he came home to find his family gone, his job gone, his prospects gone and the bills mounting up. It would be sad if he came home, as many will, to face the embarrassed silence of friends, colleagues and family who “supported the war” but need someone besides the sainted Leader to blame for our inevitable failure.
But Casey Sheehan was just one man. What’s dying in Iraq is more than that, more than dozens, more than millions. America is dying in Iraq. It’s dying hard and it’s dying ugly.
So go home, Cindy. Or better yet, stay. There are a few hundred million of us who have a few questions for the President, and sooner or later, we’ll be coming down to join you.
12:56:24 PM 
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